The Dalai Lama, himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald… striking. So, I’m on the first tee with him. I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one—big hitter, the Lama—long, into a ten-thousand foot crevasse, right at the base of this glacier. Do you know what the Lama says? Gunga galunga… gunga, gunga-galunga. So we finish the eighteenth and he’s gonna stiff me. And I say, “Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know.” And he says, “Oh, uh, there won’t be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consiousness.” So I got that goin’ for me, which is nice.

Okay, so I can never hear the name “Dalai Lama” without thinking of Carl, from Caddyshack. Hard to believe that the movie is nearly 30 years old… Anyway, back to the subject at hand. The Dalai Lama needs Bush. But not in the sexual sense. More like the political sense. I know what you are thinking. Why would a man who is lauded in much of the world as a figure of moral authority need the services of a US President who is pretty much considered the exact opposite? Some kind of yin-yang thing? A way of seeking balance in the universe? Nah. They both have a political justification: poking the dragon. President Bush and the Dalai Lama will meet today with a ceremony planned for tomorrow to award the spiritual leader the Congressional Gold Medal. This is a follow-up to the Lama’s 1989 Nobel Peace Prize (the same one awared to Arafat and Gore).

China has warned that the event will be bad for US-China ties and Chinese diplomats have worked for a year to try to get the event scrapped. Beijing reviles the Lama and claims he seeks to destroy China’s sovereignty by pushing for independence for Tibet. China is now protesting the event by pulling out of a Wednesday international strategy session on Iran. This should be interesting.